Sometimes I get so mad I want to spit. Fellow Democrats, do not cede the deficit fight or let Republicans off so easy. Hold them to the fire because it is THEY who cause debt.
My neighbor said something to me that set me off. It's part of the big theme of late... the country is drowning in debt and our government is bankrupt. This quickly follows by a rant about how Democrats are at fault and we need Republicans to fix it.
All this was the justification for voting against a funding measure for libraries to restore service previously cut for budget constraints. By most accounts, it will cost property owners about $20 a year.
Why is this so frustrating? Let me illustrate.
My first source of data is the US Treasury. The Treasury publishes a list of debts outstanding for each fiscal year. I am going to look at historical debt from 1950 to the present.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/...
My second source of data is, well, wikipedia. But all I'm getting is the dates of service for US presidents. It seems a pretty safe reference place for this non-controversial data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
I took the history of the national debt and calculated the dollar amount of change for each year starting in 1951. Then for each year, I noted who was president at the time and what party they were affiliated with. Some interesting patterns emerge. Let's work backwards chronologically.
Barack Obama (D)
Debt before: 10,024,724,896,912.40
Debt after: 11,909,829,003,511.70
Change: +1,885,104,106,599.30
Percent Change: +18.8%
George W. Bush (R)
Debt before: 5,674,178,209,886.86
Debt after: 10,024,724,896,912.40
Change: +4,350,546,687,025.54
Percent Change: +76.7%
Bill Clinton (D)
Debt before: 4,064,620,655,521.66
Debt after: 5,674,178,209,886.86
Change: +1,609,557,554,365.20
Percent Change: +39.6%
George H. W. Bush (R)
Debt before: 2,602,337,712,041.16
Debt after: 4,064,620,655,521.66
Change: +1,462,282,943,480.50
Percent Change: +56.2%
Ronald Reagan (R)
Debt before: 907,701,000,000.00
Debt after: 2,602,337,712,041.16
Change: +1,694,636,712,041.16
Percent Change: +186.7%
Jimmy Carter (D)
Debt before: 620,433,000,000.00
Debt after: 907,701,000,000.00
Change: +287,268,000,000.00
Percent Change: +46.3%
Gerald Ford (R)
Debt before: 475,059,815,731.55
Debt after: 620,433,000,000.00
Change: +145,373,184,268.45
Percent Change: +30.6%
Richard Nixon (R)
Debt before: 347,578,406,425.88
Debt after: 475,059,815,731.55
Change: +127,481,409,305.67
Percent Change: +36.7%
Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
Debt before: 305,859,632,996.41
Debt after: 347,578,406,425.88
Change: +41,718,773,429.47
Percent Change: +13.7%
John F. Kennedy (D)
Debt before: 286,330,760,848.37
Debt after: 305,859,632,996.41
Change: +19,528,872,148.04
Percent Change: +6.8%
Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
Debt before: 259,105,178,785.43
Debt after: 286,330,760,848.37
Change: +27,225,582,062.94
Percent Change: +10.5
Someone more artistic than me could make this a graph. Even more interesting when we start grouping by party.
Dollar Change by Party
Change for Republicans: +7,807,546,518,184.26
Change for Democrats: +3,843,177,306,542.01
Top 3 Debt Increase by Percentage
#1: Ronald Reagan (R), +186.7%
#2: George W. Bush (R), +76.7%
#3: George H. W. Bush (R), +56.2%
Republicans claim that they should be the ones trusted with the debt and our budget. How in the world could this be justified when their collective presidencies have added more than twice the amount to the debt as Democrat presidents? The debt history shows that the last president to make progress in this area was Clinton. Interesting to note that Clinton added only slightly more to the debt in 8 years than did George H. W. Bush in 4.
The last Republican president to actually drop the debt was Eisenhower. He also warned against the rise of the military-industrial complex. And that is what makes me so angry at my neighbor who doesn't want to shell out $20 a year so the library can be open on Saturday again, but unquestionably supports the Republican party to reduce debt.
I think we can do much better than that. I don't think any agency of the federal government should be exempt from rooting out wasteful spending or unnecessary spending. And I, frankly, I would agree with it at the Pentagon. There's got to be wasteful spending there, unnecessary spending there. It all ought to be eliminated, and we should be going through this budget line by line and, and asking the question, is this spending worth having to borrow money that our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay back? That's the real question. And if we went through the budget line by line like that, I think there's a lot more spending that we could cut. -John Boehner (R)
But when he said that, he meant wasteful spending that didn't involve jobs in his district.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Boehner really wants to build a second engine for the F-35 JSF at a cost of 485 million. For an engine that the Pentagon doesn't want or need, that the defense secretary says is a waste, all for a fighter plane that is horribly over budget and over due and completely unnecessary.
Chock another one up for Republicans being the party of debt and wasteful spending. We can cut spending to libraries but heaven forbid we talk about cutting military waste. This is what hypocrisy looks like.